Digital Portfolio

Adam Farhat

Adam Farhat is a young photographer from Portland, Oregon. His work primarily consists of portraits of his cat. He uses a variety of techniques in his work, however he is widely seen as a pioneer of smartphone photography, as he is a known advocate for its ease and convenience. Many critics in the past, however, have argued that his work is just a physical representation of his laziness, as his work seemed to only depict his cat. However, Farhat responded to the criticism by shooting the photo of a lifetime with a DSLR, rather than with his smartphone. While working on a collection of slow-motion work, Farhat took a freeze-frame photo of a man jumping off of a short ledge. Because he had metered his camera to the light of the background, his frozen subject appeared as a silhouette. To this day it is regarded as one of the greatest photos ever taken.

My favorite aspect of his work is his ability to blend simple concepts and an amatuer style while still maintaning a high degree of professionalism in all of his photos.

Masao Yamamoto

Masao Yamamoto is a Japanese photographer who was born in Gamagori-City in 1957. His early work largely comprised of small photographs that he subjected to a process of artificial aging so that his work appeared "timeless." This work has since transitioned to that which attempts to depict the "rupture between the past, present and future." Throughout his entire career, however, his work as always depicted the connection and relationship between man and nature.

All of his work is shot in black in white, and depicts the aforementioned concept of connecting humanity and nature. Much of it depicts isolated subjects in a simple background. I especially appreciate how his contrast between black and white that is exaggerated by the simplicity of his photos creates a simple, appealing image that is left up to interpretation due to the repeated subject of nature.

Gregory Crewdson

Gregory Crewdson is an American photographer from Brooklyn, New York. He attended Purchase College, and it was there that he first began photography as a hobby.  He later received a Master of Fine Arts from Yale University, where his work began to transition from a creative outlet to a more professional endeavor. Since his graduation and his senior thesis, Crewdson has continued to make over a dozen other exhibitions of his work.

Much of that work is not surrealism, but rather it captures a surreal image. His subjects are often standing in elaborately setup stages, and he uses very precise and purposeful to create dramatic images. Additionally, this light is often very sharp or has both hues of warm and cold colors. The surrealism and combination of different colors of light are what primarily draws me to his work.

Jeff Wall

Jeff Wall is a Canadian photographer whose early work helped to create the Vancouver School. The Vancouver School, or the Vancouver School of Photography, was a style of photography created in the 1990s that portrayed intense and complex content. Wall attended the University of British Columbia in 1970, and later did work at the Courtauld institute in London.

I am interested in Jeff Wall's work because of how perfect everything is arranged, and because of how well he establishes a connection between his subjects and their environments. I am also drawn to the high contrast and chaos often found in his photographs, and they create a mood not often consistently matched. Additionally, it initially appears that Wall spends a lot of time setting up his subjects and their environments, which I appreciate as their clutter greatly enhances his work. After reading more about Wall, I found this assumption to be true, as I learned about his painstakingly-long setup process and his incredible patience. These are two aspects of photography that I have yet to apply, and I am very excited to do so.

In my emulation, I will be doing mostly environmental portraits with complex and dark backgrounds. If not already provided by the scene, I will tint the picture slightly blue and will increase the contrast. Additionally, I will make sure to have nothing but the subjects in the foreground, as to replicate the work done by Wall.

I will use my Nikon DSLR as to capture the most detail and to allow for further editing which will guarantee the similarity between my photos and those of Wall.

Fazal Sheikh

Fazal Sheikh is an artist who is known for his portrait photography of people who are displaced or live in marginalized communities. In his work, Sheikh attempts to provide a better understanding of his subjects for his viewers. He was born in 1965 in New York City, and after attending Princeton, he began his career of photography. His projects of taken all over Africa and throughout the Middle East.

I chose these three photos because they were all portraits of some type, as the portraits were by far my favorite and the most impacting part of the collection. I chose the first photo because it presented a portrait in a very unconventional way, and I chose the succeeding two because of the emotion which they incite in the viewer.

The guided meditation was very beneficial to my understanding of and connection of the photo, which was the middle of the three included above. As it went on, I began noticing more and more details in the photo which I had not noticed previously. While I could not empathise with the subject and her feelings, the exercise made me feel as if I had a greater understanding of the situation and its circumstances.

Mary Ellen Mark

Mary Ellen Mark was an American 20th century photographer. Her work, which focused primarily on portraiture, has been featured in Life Magazine, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, The New York Times and Vanity Fair. Her career began in Turkey through a Fulbright Scholarship, then to all over Europe, and then to New York City where she lived most of her life. She joined Magnum Photos in 1977.

Mark paved the way for other photographers to capture social issues in their work, as she primarily focused on issues such as homelessness and drug addiction, or as she called them, the unfamous. She also hosted photography workshops for the younger generation to allow them to have an opportunity in photography.

Mary Ellen Mark's photo depicts a girl jumping over a wall in Central Park, using a moderately quick shutter speed while panning to blur the background as the girl descends. This motion in Mark's photo creates a feeling of excitement, and it takes the viewer back to the end of the 1960s which saw the end of the Civil Rights Movement.

Photo Essay Exhibition Curation

Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams was a an American photographer from 1927 through the 1970s. He specialized in black and white landscape photography, and was the founder of the photography group F64. The name F64 comes from the small aperture that was commonly used by the group, whose purpose was to contrast the common pictorialist movement that was common at the time. The photos produced by the group were very detailed and have a lot of contrast. Adams' photos commonly capture still photos of vast landscapes and mountains.

Gordon Parks

Gordon Parks was a photographer and pioneer among black filmmakers. During his career which took place throughout the middle of the 20th century, Parks' photography highlighted issues of civil rights and poverty. From 1948 through 1972, Parks worked with LIFE magazine where he created numerous photo essays. During this time he photographed sports, fashion, poverty and racial segregation. which he later transitioned into a career in film.

LIFE magazine was the first major American publication to place an emphasis on photojournalism, and is significant for its photography of World War II.